


Sanguine

by ughineedcoffee



Series: The Runt of the Litter [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Brother-Sister Relationships, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Character Study, Family, Family Feels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Little Sisters, Sam Winchester Character Study, Winchester Sister
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:36:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28843950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ughineedcoffee/pseuds/ughineedcoffee
Summary: Based around the episode 13x21, Beat the Devil (and contains many spoilers)"The world couldn't spare Sam Winchester. I couldn't spare Sam Winchester."
Series: The Runt of the Litter [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2112966
Kudos: 10





	Sanguine

**Author's Note:**

> I, obviously, own none of the dialogue that is recognizable from the show, nor do I own the plot of the episode. Admittedly, this story functions a bit as a tribute to Sam Winchester as a character I've found a lot of strength in from the time I was thirteen. It's also one of the few stories I've written from Anna's POV that is in the first person perspective. I hope you enjoy it (and feel some feels, because that's the other purpose of this)
> 
> Anna is nineteen

_Dean likes to joke that when I was a baby, I hated him and Dad. Sam, I loved._

_Part of that, I deduced as I grew older and learned more about what their lives used to be like- Part of that was because Dean and Dad were the hunters extraordinaire. Sam, on the other hand, was always home with me. I knew him best as an infant because he was there unceasingly. He took care of me in my most helpless stage of life._

()()()

I watched with pride as Sam talked down to the devil. Bound by magic and sitting, as Dean put it, like a stuck pig in our library, bleeding archangel grace into the spell that would keep the door between worlds open, Lucifer looked positively miserable. It was a beautiful sight.

Sam was the first to step through the rift, followed by Cas and Gabriel, then Dean. I stepped up behind my oldest brother and looked Lucifer dead in the eyes. I felt my lips twitch in a smile as I stared at him for a moment. He stared bitterly up at me and I stuck my tongue out at him just because I could. Then I turned and stepped through the rift.

The world darkened rapidly. Beneath my feet leaves and branches crunched. I lifted my head and saw Sam looking uncomfortably between Castiel and Gabriel who both appeared slightly flustered.

"What'd I miss?" I asked him.

"Nothing," Gabriel answered before Sam could say anything. "Nothing," he repeated. "I could've used a heads up about this landing site," he said, disgruntled.

I turned a confused smile over to Dean, but he looked serious. He was in hunter mode and not in the mood for nonsense. "Yeah. Thought we'd get spit out in the same spot, but this isn't it," he said. "Alright, well, Charlie-- the other Charlie-- said that Mary and Jack have an outpost in Dayton."

"Okay," Sam said. "Let's get out bearings and head that way. Cas, where are we?"

I watched Cas close his eyes and concentrate. It would be awesome to be able to do even half the things Cas can do with his angel mojo. "Uh, Kentucky. Northeast Kentucky. Or what used to be Kentucky."

I grinned, wondering if it would ever get less cool watching Cas do stuff like that.

Dean looked up and pointed in one direction. "Which means that's north. Okay, so Dayton's that way. Roughly." I thought maybe it would be just as cool to be able to do what Dean could do with his human knowledge. Dean looked around at each of us. "Two days by foot," he said. "But... that way."

I bobbed my eyebrows, feeling a little less excited. Long walks... nothing like 'em. "Alright, cool," I said. Beneath our moving feet, there was the rustling of leaves and the snapping of twigs.

()()()

_I was almost three when Sam left for Stanford. The details of that night are fuzzy now. All I remember is the way Sam's eyes were so bloodshot, his words so sharp, and the way Dad just kept cutting him down every step of the way._

_All I can think is that Sam didn't want to fight. Sam just wanted to be free._

_I wasn't there in the way that Dean was, and I certainly wasn't there in the way that Sam or Dad were. I was two years old. I cowered in Dean's arms the whole time with wide eyes. I screamed when Dad pulled back his fist and almost hit Sam, making Dean jerk forward as if he wouldn't have been too late to stop it. But Dad stopped himself, and he pointed at the door, and he said those words that would forever haunt my brother, the words that just might haunt all of us forever._

_It was a night of shadows and gloom. But most of all, it was a night of heartbreak. Dean was never the same after Sam left, losing much of his happy, go lucky attitude and adopting a more responsible demeanour. I was too young to understand, but maybe I changed too. Or maybe I knew, in a way that Dean and Dad couldn't, that Sam wasn't gone for good, that he needed out but would be back._

()()()

Sam stepped up beside Dean and the two started talking in quiet voices. I purposely bumped shoulders with Cas and walked with him behind my brothers.

"It's cool, isn't it?" I said while scanning the area around us.

"Cool is not the word I would use to describe this place," Cas answered, looking ahead of us at Sam and Dean.

"Okay, well, pardon my teenage vocabulary, Cas," I quipped, sending him a slightly exasperated sideways look. "But it feels good, right? Moving toward something... I don't know... _good_."

"Do not get ahead of yourself, Anna."

"You're such a buzzkill, dude." I took three swift strides and squeezed between my brothers who, hopefully, would be better company than Cas. Sam had this look on his face, like he was energized, happy. "You swallow a happy pill?" I joked.

Sam shot me a bitchface, but his smile didn't quite fade.

"She's right, you know," Dean said. "You seem different since we got here."

Sam raised an eyebrow for a second. "Really?"

"Yeah, like you're lighter, happier, more energetic."

Sam looked between us. "I don't know," he said thoughtfully. "Maybe it's just, you know, Mom and Jack and..."

"We're finally here," I said. "After working at it for so long."

"Exactly," Sam agreed. "We're close." He looked at Dean, genuinely happy in a way that I hadn't seen him since... I couldn't even think of the last time. "Can't you feel it?"

I caught his eyes and nodded, still smiling, but Dean didn't say anything. I elbowed him. "Stop waiting for the other shoe to drop, Dean."

No sooner had the words left my mouth than a scream echoed through the still air.

()()()

_I had just turned seven when we picked Sam up from Stanford in 2005. It was Halloween, but I only cared about that because my stuffed frog's name was Halloween. I was so clueless to it all even after those four years that would be known grimly as Sam's Stanford years._

_In those days it was all about Dad. We were scared for him. Mostly I was, really. But Sam coming back was like this wonderful thing, to me. It was this ray of sunshine. I remembered fairly little about him since I hadn't seen him in four years. But I warmed up to him immediately, even shy as I was back then. We played I Spy on the road to Jericho to hunt that woman in white, and after that it was sealed. He was my big brother again._

_Sam lost Jessica, and I watched him drown in guilt and grief. He had nightmares and he threw himself into the hunt. I struggled to understand my brother while he was at his worst. But even then I saw a side of him that no one else could._

_He started teaching me so I wouldn't have to follow the online curriculum I'd been using since I stopped going to public elementary schools. He often comforted me after nightmares because he was awake during the middle of the night and could hear me crying._

_Sam was so deep in hunting that first year, and yet all along he was so hopeful that he wouldn't have to keep being a hunter. Sam told Dean, that night when we saved a family from the yellow-eyed demon, that when we finally did kill Azazel, he was going back to school, to finish what he'd started and to have the life he'd always worked toward. Dean was surprised, hurt even, because all he'd ever wanted was for our family to be together and happy. But I understood, even at seven years old. Sam didn't want to leave our family. Sam wanted to be a lawyer. As Dean ignored the details of a world that would never come to be, I clung to them. Sam would go back to school, become a lawyer, and he would keep us in the picture so long as we would have him. We would all sit around his table at big holiday dinners, maybe he would find another love, have children. Maybe someday Dean would settle down in the house next door. Maybe I would go to college when I was bigger._

_I fantasized about it all when I was seven years old. I let Sam's dreams dance around in my head and I thought about all the what ifs that had always been so taboo. I saw Sammy's 'impossible' life differently than Dean or Dad. I saw Sam as the man who still knew how to dream, who still saw the world outside of monsters and death, who still looked at me like I had choices, like I wasn't destined to be a hunter, like he wasn't destined to be a hunter. I saw Sam for his hope, his belief that happy endings weren't as unattainable as I'd been taught._

()()()

Floyd and Maggie seemed like good people, I supposed as we paused just outside the entrance to the tunnel they'd led us to. They wanted to join the so-called rebellion that Mary and Jack were heading. They were willing to cross through this dangerous tunnel and fight with us despite knowing that there was a safer route. They seemed like the kind of people that are never in horror movies: genuinely good and not fearless, but courageous.

I watched as they got out their flashlights and wondered just how creepy this tunnel situation was going to be.

"Alright," Sam said, stepping up behind me. "Here's the plan. Stay close. Keep walking. Anything moves, kill it."

I smirked. We were playing by Winchester law. "Let's do this," Dean said.

It felt kind of ridiculous in the most badass way possible to walk into a dark cave with glow sticks around our necks and shotguns in our hands. Dean took point as always, and I kept right behind him while Sam took up the rear, the four others between us. It was the safest place to be, in the middle of a Winchester sandwich.

We walked in relative silence for a while, everybody on high alert. Floyd tripped, cried out, and had us all thinking we were about to be ambushed. I couldn't help the relieved smile I twitched at him as he stood up and brushed himself off. We continued forward with our guns raised at the ready until we heard growling sounds from up ahead. The vamp we'd seen earlier had been starved and animalistic in a way that few monsters from our world ever were. The sounds up ahead were definitely savage.

Maggie held her flashlight out and I grimaced at the sight of a vampire, much like the one we'd discovered earlier, chomping down on some poor dead woman's remains. Odds were Maggie and Floyd knew this woman when she was alive considering the horrified expressions on their faces.

"Wait, wait, wait," Sam said, stepping forward with his machete. "Let me." The vamp hissed at him, and I tensed, as I always did when Sam or Dean was approached by a monster. Sam beheaded the creature with ease, and I relaxed slightly. Dean jerked his head in one direction and I led the others that way, past the half-drained corpse and deeper into the tunnel.

We were all watchful as we walked, but none of us noticed the vampire behind Maggie until she was screaming.

"Maggie! Maggie!" Floyd yelled.

The flashlight beams twitched aimlessly as Dean rushed over and struggled with the vampire until he'd pulled it off of Maggie. Before he had time to behead it, though, the vamp took off down a side tunnel.

"You alright?" I heard Dean ask Maggie. She hummed a response and nodded, eyes still wide and scared. "Let's keep moving," Dean ordered, and I continued forward, feeling oddly vulnerable as the one in the front of the group. As we walked, Dean made his way up front again, walking just ahead of me. I tried to keep an eye on our sides, unnerved by the snarling sounds still echoing at a distance from the tunnels.

"We've got a blocked passage over here," Dean announced as we stepped into a sort of clearing in the tunnel. "Need to move some rocks." Gabriel and Cas went to uncover the passageway.

It felt kinda nice to have some extra space and I stepped out into it, catching Sam's eyes and smiling encouragingly. This was unfamiliar territory for me, dark and dangerous tunnels filled with monsters gone mindless with starvation. I heard a sound from one of the smaller tunnels near Sam and we both moved toward it, but he gestured for me to stay put while he looked around for a second.

I saw a flash of movement and that was the end of any and all optimism as from there things would only get worse.

"Guys!" Maggie yelled, but I was already headed toward the movement, drawing my own machete.

"Dean?" Sam called.

I stepped into darkness, searching for signs of the vampire Maggie and I had noticed. My heart was pounding, and I wondered if the vamps could hear it, if it made them hungrier.

Dean stepped away from where he was watching Cas and Gabriel and I caught sight of his face only briefly.

"Floyd!" Maggie yelled urgently. I turned to see what was going on, maybe to help, but before I had the chance, there were two hands on my shoulders.

I gasped and ducked, flipping the vamp over my shoulders in one fell swoop. I didn't execute the move perfectly, and my back twinged at the weight put on it. I swung my machete down to take off the vampire's head while it was lying on the ground with the wind knocked out of it. The splatter of blood was spectacular in the worst possible way as I felt warm liquid hit my face in several places.

I didn't have time to dwell on it, though, as I looked up to see that the shit had hit the fan for everyone else as well.

"I've got it. I've got it!" Sam yelled.

I headed that way, seeing several other vampires heading in from all directions. _God_ , I thought, _It's a damn massacre_.

()()()

_"Sammy," I said, terrified, when I was nine years old and didn't understand how wrong things had gone. My voice was shaking and my hands were clammy as I looked up and met his knowing if nervous gaze. "I know Dean did something bad for you."_

_"Anna, don't," Sam said, reaching out and grabbing my hand. His forehead was wrinkled with that worry that never went away. "You don't understand this."_

_"I don't care. Sam, you're my brother. I need you."_

_"You need Dean," Sam said, tilting his head with tears in his eyes. He was wearing a dangerous expression but I wasn't scared, because it was Sam. "But now he's on a fast track to-"_

_"Hell," I said the dirty word, and bit my lip as it suddenly quivered. "Sam, you have to save him," I begged, leaning forward so our faces almost touched. "But please don't die. Please, Sammy, don't die. Dean was so wrong without you. And I think I almost was too."_

_Sam looked away, stared somewhere I couldn't see, thought about something I could never understand. "I don't want to have this conversation with you. But I'm the one who's supposed to be dead. Dean messed with the laws of the universe, Anna."_

_"I don't care," I said again, feeling anger and desperation and a lot of other feelings no nine year old should ever encounter. "I don't care about laws. Just save him. But save you too."_

_Sam stared into my eyes, and neither of us blinked. I was a child and all I knew about Dean's deal was that he got Sam back but would be going to hell in a year, that if he tried to get out of it, Sam would drop dead again. It was the most horrific thing I'd ever known, because it meant both of my brothers were in danger of dying all the time. There was no rest that year._

_But Sam's eyes shone with determination, with hope, with... love. "I will," he said. "I promise you."_

_I smiled tearfully at him. I trusted him._

()()()

Floyd screamed and Maggie moved to help him but was grabbed by another vamp. I ran for the vamps dragging Floyd away by his feet. The first was distracted enough that I was able to swiftly behead it with my machete. The second, though, knocked it out of my hand and tackled me with all its weight.

My head hit a rock, colors exploding in my vision momentarily. I reached blindly upward and my hand hit the vamp's throat. As I got my bearings, vision starting to clear, I swung one knee up hard and hit the vamp somewhere I couldn't see. It was effective enough to get him off of me, and he fell sideways onto the ground. I lurched to my knees and grabbed at the ground where I thought I'd heard my machete fall.

When my hand found it, my vision was finally clear again, but I'd grabbed the blade and had to hurriedly turn the machete in my hand, ignoring the sting of shallow cuts in three of my fingers. I shoved the blade down, decapitating the vamp in one go.

"Sammy!"

I nearly gave myself whiplash with how quickly I snapped my head around at the sound of Dean's utter panic. Sam had been knocked to his knees, held by two vampires, his machete out of the picture.

"Sam!" I yelled and ran for him, only to be grabbed by another vamp. I kicked blindly, getting its kneecap and knocking it to its ass behind me.

"Dean!" Sam hollered.

I staggered forward dizzily, my head spinning and pounding. "Sammy," I gasped. He was too far away. I would never get to him in time. I stepped over a body with no head, hoping against hope, panicking despite its futility. Sam struggled, but the vamps overpowered him, several of them on top of him. One of them grabbed his hair and pulled his head back. I was tackled from behind and hit dirt face first.

"Sam!"

Dean's voice was raw, terrified, angry.

()()()

_In all his broken heroics, Sam Winchester was most admirable when he stopped self-deprecating and began to trust his own morality, his own intelligence... himself. Of all the things he taught me during our time caged in on the open road before we found the Men of Letters Bunker, from basic calculus concepts to complex Latin verses, perhaps it was his unspoken pattern of personal growth that was important._

_All along I saw him as he was beneath everything. Beneath the lies was fear of rejection. Beneath the hate was a desperate kind of love. Beneath the evil was the despair, the scrambling effort to be only good. Beneath the fights and insults were the pleas. Trust me. Help me. Hurt me if you have to, but give me a chance._

_Whether it was a childish effort to believe that Sammy hadn't changed the way Dad said he might, or it was a real understanding that Sam's humanity didn't make him any less, I forever stood by that faith I had in him when I was ten and eleven years old._

_Sam conquered something none of us ever experienced quite the same way, and he did it while everybody whose approval he craved shot him down._

_I didn't just love Sam. I didn't just have faith in him. I respected him._

_Sam stepped out of darkness and taught me that so long as you keep trying, you are never too far gone_.

()()()

I swung an elbow hard behind me, catching the vamp in the side. "Sammy!" I raised my head in a panic just in time to see dirty fangs sink into my brother's throat. Still several feet away, I _heard_ my brother's flesh tear away, a squelch and a rip, and a cry of pain.

He was choking when he gasped our names one last time. First Dean's, then mine. His blood poured out of the wound in his throat, and with it went all hope that he would make it out of this.

His eyes glazed over, clear and empty like glass. Sam was the middle child, but he was always the one with the puppy dog eyes. No more.

All I could see, a painting in his blood, was the smile on his face earlier today. The brightness in his voice as we walked through colorless woods on a long awaited quest. _We're close_ , he'd said. _Close. Close to what?_ I thought bitterly, desperately, struggling beneath the weight of the vampire still on my back. _Close to Mary, close to Jack?_ My fingernails scraped against the ground, broke and filled with dirt. _Or close to this moment?_ _This moment where Sam would be mutilated, torn apart before our very eyes because he just wasn't allowed to be happy, to be optimistic, and to have it play out in his favor?_ My eyes filled even as I gritted my teeth and threw elbows at the vampire keeping me from my broken brother. _Can't you feel it?_ he'd asked. I could. I could feel my insides shredding as Sam was murdered in a mess of teeth and blood.

"S-Sa-"

The vamp on top of me was thrown sideways and I rolled onto my back with tear-filled, wide eyes to see Cas take out the monster. I scrambled to my feet at the same time as Cas started toward Sam. Nothing had ever mattered like getting to my brother did in that moment.

"Sammy!" I screamed, my voice cracking on the second syllable, the one Sam always insisted was only for Dean. I couldn't call him Sammy, he used to say. I was the baby Winchester now. He could call me nicknames, but I couldn't do the same.

My head still pounded painfully, but my heart ached ten times worse as I remembered his bitchface, his _Anna, you're younger than me_. I stumbled forward, picking up the pace as the vampires that had killed my brother dragged him down a tunnel.

"Sammy..."

I could hear Dean end the struggle with his vampires, and his feet pounded close behind me. Cas, though, was the one far ahead down the tunnel. Before Dean or I could reach our brother, Cas was coming back. There were no vamps with him, and Sam was nowhere in sight.

Somehow, that was the painful moment that had me wrapping an arm around my stomach as if I'd been gut-punched. Cas couldn't fix our brother. Cas was coming back to us without our brother. Sam wasn't going to walk back up to us, let Dean fuss over his injuries, promise me everything was alright.

And that was just it. Everything was _not_ alright.

"Sam!" Dean yelled beside me and pushed forward.

I didn't move. The world was graying, spinning. But it wasn't my head wound. It was my disbelief. Sam was standing right beside me not five minutes ago. He was meeting my eyes, looking serious but still so sure that we would make it to Dayton. That we would _all_ make it to Dayton.

God, I didn't even _want_ to go to Dayton without Sam.

I stumbled a few steps forward, hearing Dean deny something and Cas shove him backwards. I couldn't even keep up. I could only stare ahead down the depths of that tunnel and pray to everything that had abandoned this world and its people, begging for this to be a dream.

"Sam," I whispered.

()()()

_"Sam, I'm not going to college."_

_"Why not?!"_

_"Are you kidding me right now? Did you forget everything about us, about me?"_

_Sam stood up from his chair at the library. "Anna, our whole lives have been spent keeping you safe, getting you to this point. You have a choice now. You can go to college and have a life that isn't haunted by fire and demons. You can find love and have a family."_

_"You are my family. You and Dean. Cas."_

_"We are. We always will be. But you have to take this chance. This chance to be safe."_

_"I don't. Want. Safe," I said emphatically. "I never have. I just want to be good, to help people, to be what you and Dean have been your whole lives. I want to do the right thing, not the selfish thing."_

_"It's not selfish!"_

_It wasn't. But it was. The choice to live a life outside of hunting was okay, but the choice to do that even knowing how hurt your family would be... that was what made it selfish. I was seeing a side of the Stanford fight that I'd never thought of before. Yet I knew it was wrong, even as I thought of it. Sam was a lot of things. Stubborn, understanding, intelligent, to name a few. But he wasn't selfish. He never had been._

_"You said once that you wanted to be a doctor, or a psychiatrist. Anna, do it. Go for it. Be selfless in a way that won't get you killed. Please."_

_I said no. I repeated the word until the end of my senior year when he finally let it go. But I never forgot that he tried to fight for me even when I refused to fight for myself._

()()()

"We don't have time," Cas growled, a command because he knew that was the only thing Dean would listen to.

"Cas, you're out of your _mind_ ," I bit out. "If you think we're leaving him here." Sam would never go. Sam would never watch blood pour from my throat, or Dean's, and then turn around and continue like it never happened.

But Dean, still staring in shock, tears in his eyes, down the tunnel where Sam had been dragged away, was actually moving with Cas, moving away from Sam, moving toward the journey we started all _together._

"No," I said again. "No. We can't leave him here. We can't-" My voice broke, and I couldn't remember how to talk for a second.

Cas' expression was hard as he pushed Dean backwards toward the others. "We have to go," he said to me, placing a hand on my shoulder, then moving it up to my face, cupping my cheek. "It's what Sam would want."

"Fuck that!" I yelled. "Fuck it," I repeated, but the words came out too fragile.

Dean's hand was on my arm as I stared past Cas to where Sam had been taken. Had Cas killed those vampires? Were they still devouring Sammy's corpse like that ravenous fang had been eating Maggie's friend when we first started down this God-forsaken tunnel?

"No!" I yelled when Dean started pulling me back toward him, away from Sam.

"Anna-"

"No!" I struggled to collect my thoughts, to piece together a plan or even just a reason that would convince them I could stay. But who was I kidding? I didn't need a reason. Sam was my reason. Sam was lying back there someplace, covered in congealing blood and losing body heat with every passing second. "I'm staying," I said, forcing determination into the words even though I felt like I was entering a state of lethargy, of half-consciousness as Sam's death grew heavy as cement in my stomach. "You guys go. Bring back Mom and Jack. Lucifer will keep the rift open, and you'll have to pass back through here anyway. I'm not leaving him here."

Dean had lines of pain and grief on his face and his eyes still appeared glazed with shock when he grabbed me with both arms and held me in a tight hug. I took the moment of solace and buried my face in his shoulder. "You be careful," he ordered into my hair. "We're comin' back."

"I know," I said quietly.

Dean sniffled, pulled back, and patted my shoulder twice as if in preparation to walk away from me, from Sam, from this place that would stand out in our nightmares for the rest of our lives. Cas met my eyes, then Gabriel did. I didn't even look at Maggie or Floyd. They had no hope of understanding the delicacy of this moment.

Dean turned away from me, and he didn't look back. If he did, we all knew, he would never be able to walk out of the cave.

Once the five of them were gone, I looked down at the ground, bit my bottom lip hard to keep from crying, and retrieved my machete. The handle was cold in my hand and it stung against the cuts on my fingers. All around me were the remains of mayhem, the sanguine debris, and I stood in that room, an unglorified survivor amongst the dead.

My feet felt like lead as I inched down the tunnel. My brother was waiting.

I stepped into a clearing like the one where everything went to hell but much smaller. In the center lay Sam Winchester, blood painting his neck and the bottom of his face like artwork. My legs weakened and I barely made it to his side. I knelt, reached out one shaking hand. His face was already cold. His eyes were still open.

I opened my mouth, willing myself to say his name, to tell him something and everything as if it weren't too late for him to hear it. My throat closed before any sound could come out.

Here lay a hero. Here lay a friend, a brother, a son. Here lay the man who broke the world and put it back together again in one moment of tragic sacrifice. Here lay a man whose life was all too full of pain and sorrow, who found happiness for a few minutes on this very day, and who died on a mission to save two people he loved.

The world couldn't spare Sam Winchester. I couldn't spare Sam Winchester.

I turned around, my back to his corpse, and threw up next to the pile of vampires, the pure evil that had stolen Sam's pulse. I heaved until there was nothing left inside of me, until I was vacant like Sam's eyes, so full in his final moments, now so dull, so wrong.

I turned back to him, placed one hand over his glassy eyes, closing them so I wouldn't have to see how empty they were. As long as I'd known him, Sammy had been anything but empty.

()()()

_When Mary came back, I was a problem. I wasn't her daughter, but I was John's, and that was like the straw that broke the camel's back. In a world that had changed beyond her understanding, Mary was lost. I was a hurricane that blinded her while she was turning in circles, trying to find her way._

_Before Mary left, I did, planning to stay gone for a couple weeks and then come back when she'd adjusted. Before Dean or their mother realized I'd gone, Sam did. He caught me at a rest stop before I made it out of Kansas._

_"You weren't even gonna say goodbye?" he asked, making guilt pool in my stomach._

_"I'll come back in awhile. She needs time, and you need her. Dean does."_

_Sam sat down on a bench outside of the little coffee shop I'd been headed to. I took the queue and sat down beside him, turning sideways with one foot on the bench so I could face him._

_"Anna, you think you're the only one who feels out of place right now?" he asked me._

_I was startled to see some amount of anger on his face. "I mean... I guess not," I answered. "But I'm the only one who's making this harder for- for Mary," I stuttered past her name, still unaccustomed to saying it._

_Sam studied me for a minute. "Mom's adjusting," he said. "And while she's adjusting, she's gonna have to adjust to every part of our lives. The fact that we're hunters and the fact that we have a little sister... those are new to her. But so is seeing Dean and me as adults. Anna, she doesn't talk to me much either. She doesn't talk to anyone but Dean, because Dean at least knew her for a little while when she was alive."_

_I was surprised at the news. "Sam, she's your mother."_

_"And?" I didn't have an answer. "Ladybug, I have no idea how to talk to her. I never knew her. She's just been this symbol my whole life. First she was the perfect wife, the perfect mother, and the one we were working to avenge. Then she was the woman who made a deal with Azazel to save Dad and who sold me out in the process. I've spent the last several years working through it all in my head and I still don't know how to feel about everything she's done."_

_I nodded. I understood that kind of confusion. My mother was, after all, one of the most imperfect people I've ever known._

_"But I forgive her for all that. I just don't think she knows it yet." Sam sighed. "Look, all I'm saying is that we're not giving anything up for her. I'm not giving anything up for her. I can't wait until she's comfortable with us and she's ready to be part of our lives without hesitating. But I'm not letting you run away because you're scared."_

_"I'm not scared," I insisted, ever defensive about that one particular emotion. "And I'm not running."_

_"Anna, I know running, and I know fear."_

_And he did. He knew them both like the back of his hand. Running had always been his biggest mistake and fear had always been his reason. But he wouldn't let me do the same. That was the beauty of Sam Winchester._

()()()

My eyes were burning with the effort of keeping them open. I had no clue how long it'd been, but for the past stretch of time I'd been near catatonic. My bottom half was numb, my mind lethargic. I wanted the others to come back, but I wanted to be here alone with Sam just as much.

"Boo."

I jumped wildly, grip tightening around the handle of my machete that had been lying in the dirt. My knees seemed to creak under my weight as I forced them to straighten, got to my feet. Standing in the entrance to this little room of horrors was the devil himself.

Who would have thought the devil could ever be considered a godsend?

"Lucifer," I whispered, wondering if he was here to take my life, hoping he was capable of saving Sam's

"Hello, Angel. Oh, wait. I'm the angel." He grinned.

"You're here for Sam," I said dully, noticing how his eyes were locked on Sam's bloody neck.

"Yeah, I mean, you could do the dance, make believe you hate to see me here. Or you could just ask me nicely, watch me give Sammy back his life."

"Don't call him that," I snapped, anger filling the hole in my heart. I stared at Lucifer. He was right. I wanted charity, but I would accept a trade. "Can you save him?"

"Why would I do that?" Lucifer asked smugly, smiling at my brother's corpse like Sam dying wasn't the most tragic thing that could happen to this world or ours.

I scrambled for an answer, but came up short. We tied him up, used him for what we wanted. He deserved it and worse, but it didn't matter. He would never agree to help me. I stared at Sam, at the dried blood on his face, at the white pallor of his skin that said Sam would soon be spoken of only in the past tense.

I looked up at him. "Why are you even here?" I asked bitterly, the pain I'd managed to shut away after hours of nothing but a corpse, a prayer, and an ever-growing chill. "You could have just kept going."

Lucifer smiled widely. "Sharp. That's why I like you. It's why I like Sam."

"You don't like Sam," I argued. "You tortured him for saving the world and called it your biggest accomplishment. I bet you hand out trophies in hell to everyone who makes him hurt."

Lucifer laughed, pointing at me, "You're right," he said. "Not about the trophies thing. That's a little..." He pulled a face. "Immature. Even for me."

"Right," I scoffed and looked away. "You killed Rowena?" I asked dimly, unsure if I didn't care or if my concern for her just could touch the pain of Sam's dead body in front of me.

"Oh, she's okay," he said. "I mean, I-I was going to kill her. But she blasted me here before I had a chance. It's great, self-defense. But, uh, I was coming here anyway."

My head snapped up at that. He was coming anyway. He wanted something. Something here, something he cared enough about to risk his life over instead of running away in our world and staying safe from us and from Gabriel.

"That's right. I want something."

"What?" I asked, maybe a little too quickly.

"I want what you, what _Sam_ already has. A relationship with my son."

As understanding dawned, I tilted my head back. "You want to see Jack," I said. "I know where he is. "Fix my brother, I'll take you to him."

"Might wanna be careful about how overeager you get there, kid," Lucifer taunted, leaning over Sam's body, getting closer to me. "I know what I want and I know what you want. But first, I want a guarantee."

"What?" I asked harshly, hurriedly. I would give anything, everything, to get Sam back. It was just a matter of waiting for him to make a demand, spending those few seconds saying _yes_. It was a matter of a minute, maybe less, and Sam would be breathing again. I didn't care that I was oversimplifying it.

A deal of this sort was a criminal panacea that would break every law of the universe, but it was still something to be praised so long as it got me back my brother.

"I want my son, and you're gonna help me. Jack will warm up to me more quickly if I come bearing gifts. That's where Sammy comes in. You? All you have to do is acknowledge that I brought him back to life, that I answered your prayers. You struck a deal, and you got off easy. You get your brother and all you have to do is walk the same road you would have if he'd never died... with one extra companion."

I didn't blink, just stood there beside Sam's lifeless body. There was no question. There was no if. I was going to say yes.

I looked down, and before I even had time to process it, my lips were moving. "Okay," I said. "Help him."

Lucifer grinned in that way that said _I win_ , and he crouched, one hand on Sam's chest. There was a bright, healing light, and I should have looked away because it was too bright, but I just stared, letting it burn my eyes. It faded and I blinked away the afterimage, keeping my gaze on my brother. For a terrifying moment, I thought Lucifer hadn't had the power to do the deed, thought he'd been lying.

But then Sam gasped back to life, and I didn't care about how Lucifer had gained the power after we drained him for so long. I didn't care about whether the door would stay open now that the devil was here and not on the other side, insurance that we would continue to have a way home.

I cared about Sam, whose hands were touching his neck, now whole again. I cared about the hazel eyes that were filled with confusion, disbelief, and terror when they landed on Lucifer, then horror when they found me. I cared that Sam was _living_ again.

He surged upward and immediately took up a protective stance between me and Lucifer. I grabbed his sleeve, needing contact. "Sammy," I breathed. I realized as he demanded to know what Lucifer wanted, why he'd saved him, that the last thing Sam ever would have wanted was to be saved by his tormentor of over one hundred years in hell. "I'm sorry."

It felt like betrayal, selling Sam's freedom from debt so easily. I knew my brother, and I knew he would feel wrong for days or weeks or maybe years knowing that Lucifer had once again saved his life and had spared mine in doing so.

Sam's gaze lingered on my face which I knew had changed forever. I'd had an innocence in my green eyes when we stepped through the rift this morning. But that pristine purity had been dyed red today, soaked too long in the sight of my brother's blood.

Sam grabbed my shoulder, met my eyes. I saw forgiveness and sadness. I saw my brother, the version of him that I'd seen since I was a baby that only stopped crying when he picked me up. I saw a promise in his eyes that however wrong things had gone while his body grew cold, he would right them now.

I smiled, a smile that was so sad it didn't deserve the title.

Sam taught me a million things, a hundred ways to walk through life and fifty ways not to. But the second he was gone, so were those lessons.

I swallowed hard and put it all away, all the questions and the memories and the terror.

This day had crawled inside my mind, made its place behind my eyelids and painted my view of the world in shades of blood-red and midnight-black.

 _Sweet dreams_ , Sammy told me every night when I was little. _Good luck in your nightmare_ , I thought at nineteen, as we crossed through the room where he'd been devoured..

_la fin_


End file.
